Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Charles Kuffner interviews Harris DA candidate C.O. Bradford

Charles Kuffner has an interview up with former Houston PD Chief C.O. "Brad" Bradford who's now the Democratic nominee for District Attorney. Bradford declared his support for a number of forward thinking ideas, including making the Houston crime lab independent from law enforcement, increasing use of personal bonds to relieve jail overcrowding, and letting police officers use new authority to issue citations instead of arresting for certain low-level offenses. Listen to the interview (mp3).

Kuff covered a lot of ground and got Bradford on the record about a number of subjects I'd not seen nor heard Mr. Bradford discuss, in particular the need to change the culture of the office and get away from judging success or failure solely on the basis of Ws and Ls in the courtroom, which he says is currently the main metric by which internal candidates for promotion are judged. Bradford also suggests creating a Conviction Integrity Unit modeled after the one famously created by Dallas DA Craig Watkins.

Kuff has only been interviewing Democratic candidates, so we may not see a comparable interview by him of Bradford's GOP opponent, former District Judge Pat Lykos. If Chuck won't mind the suggestion, this may be a good race to make an exception to the Dems only interview policy; it'd be good to get both candidates on the record regarding the topics covered in his interview.

Looking forward, AHCL over at Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center has promised previews of contested elections in Harris County related to criminal courts, so we'll surely be getting more bloggerly analysis on this race in addition to the usual MSM coverage as the November plebiscites approach.

Man I wish we Democrats in Houston had a better candidate. It looks like Harris County may see a turnover in judges like they did in Dallas, and Bradford will ride their coat tails as well as the wave of scandals related to Rosenthal.

But Bradford was in charge of HPD during the period that the crime lab became so pitiful. He's just another of Mayor Brown's cronies who were put in place based on skin color instead of competence. And now he'll win solely because he's not Rosenthal and not a Republican.

Harris County will only get worse with him as DA. Or more likely, just be a different sort of bad.

Rage, they addressed the crime lab in the interview so be sure to give it a listen. He's saying the right things, in any event - he supports making the crime lab independent of law enforcement control and requiring annual, outside audits, which IMO is the right call.

There's a LOT of blame to go around on the crime lab, for sure, and he deserves some of it. But fate has decreed that these are your choices: either he or Judge Lykos will get the job. That's why I'd like to hear her answers to the same questions. Neither candidate's past I find particularly inspiring, so that leaves analyzing what, exactly, each of them says they'll do.

I do agree that coattails will matter more in the race than either candidates' merits, which is a particularly problematic aspect of having DAs and judges elected in partisan races.

I know what he's saying about having it be independent, but he has no control over that. If HPD doesn't run it, DPS or the feds will. They will never put their forensics in the hands of someone they can't control. Hell, they don't even want Defendants to have independent access to their own experts. They're dang sure not going to relenquish control of their own.

I do not believe Bradford can be trusted to even try to do what he says he's going to do. I dang sure don't believe he'll ever have the working consensus to actually get it done.

Fate is, like Rosenthal's secretary, a cruel mistress. Lykos is little more than a re-branding of Siegler/Rosenthal, and Bradford is a return to the inadequacies and corruption of the Brown administration. He's too engulfed in his own past to do an effective job from a policy standpoint. Anyone can get a conviction in this county. But he will not be able to make significant change in the culture down here.

Having the lab be in the oversight of someone other that HPD will cut down on the mistake and it's quite easy to do, so Rage, stop critizing and come up with some suggestiosn that will help. As for Bradford, to me is the lesser of the two evils. Almost anyone who is black and in a power position is a "spin-off" of Brown and Lanier. We need new faces and new idea, and rmember if we don't like what he's doing then he can always be voted out.

So Bradford's slimey buddy, super-mega defense lawyer, Rusty Hardin is having a fundraiser for him this eve.

If that's not a turn off enough, get a load of this - "Brad"'s charging supporters $500 a pop to get in the door...it gets worse; seems you're just an "Other" to Bradford if you can only cough up $250. And if you're a "Friend" forget about it -- it a $1000 shake down at the door .

"I always tell people interested in these issues that your blog is the most important news source, and have had high-ranking corrections officials tell me they read it regularly."

- Scott Medlock, Texas Civil Rights Project

"a helluva blog"

- Solomon Moore, NY Times criminal justice correspondent

"Congrats on building one of the most read and important blogs on a specific policy area that I've ever seen"

- Donald Lee, Texas Conference of Urban Counties

GFB "is a fact-packed, trustworthy reporter of the weirdness that makes up corrections and criminal law in the Lone Star State" and has "shown more naked emperors than Hans Christian Andersen ever did."

-Attorney Bob Mabry, Conroe

"Grits really shows the potential of a single-state focused criminal law blog"

- Corey Yung, Sex Crimes Blog

"I regard Grits for Breakfast as one of the most welcome and helpful vehicles we elected officials have for understanding the problems and their solutions."

Tommy Adkisson,Bexar County Commissioner

"dude really has a pragmatic approach to crime fighting, almost like he’s some kind of statistics superhero"

- Rob Patterson, The Austin Post"Scott Henson's 'Grits for Breakfast' is one of the most insightful blogs on criminal justice issues in Texas."

- Texas Public Policy Foundation

"Nobody does it better or works harder getting it right"

David Jennings, aka "Big Jolly"

"I appreciate the fact that you obviously try to see both sides of an issue, regardless of which side you end up supporting."

Kim Vickers,Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and EducationGrits for Breakfast "has probably broken more criminal justice stories than any TX reporter, but stays under the radar. Fascinating guy."

Maurice Chammah,The Marshall Project"unrestrained and uneducated"

John Bradley,Former Williamson County District Attorney, now former Attorney General of Palau

"our favorite blog"

- Texas District and County Attorneys Association Twitter feed"Scott Henson ... writes his terrific blog Grits for Breakfast from an outhouse in Texas."